Rosetta’s Philae lander took this picture that shows one of its 14-meter-long solar wings on Wednesday shortly after its separation from the mother spaceship. The lander then descended to the 2.5-mile-wide 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet.

The picture released by the European Space Agency ESA on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014, showing scientists as they react in the main control room at the ESA after the first unmanned spacecraft

LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE >> While the European Space Agency celebrated the world’s first spacecraft landing on an icy, dusty, hurtling comet Wednesday morning, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory looked to the end of 2015, when they said humanity might be closer to answering some of the tough questions about the origin of the solar system.

After a 10-year journey and nearly 4 billion traveled miles, ESA’s Rosetta delivered a washing machine-size lander, Philae, on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The spacecraft is scheduled to conduct its primary mission for 2.5 days before its battery is expected to run out.

“The lander adds more important pieces of the puzzle, but I would like to emphasize that over time, we can fill in most of the puzzle and tremendously improve our understanding even with just the orbiter instruments,” said Mark Hofstadter, a planetary scientist at NASA’s JPL and the deputy principal investigator of an instrument on the Rosetta orbiter.

Rosetta, launched in March 2004, is the first spacecraft to rendezvous with and orbit a comet. Philae is the first lander to successfully set foot on a comet’s surface. Rosetta will continue to circle Comet 67P and send observations back to Earth throughout 2015.

In 2001, NASA was the first to orbit and place a space probe on an asteroid. But landing on a comet is more difficult because of the celestial object’s mercurial nature, which continuously releases dust and gas that could injure a spacecraft.

Rosetta’s instruments are able to study the things that evaporate off the surface of the comet, but there are some things that don’t sublimate. So the lander adds pieces to a part of the cosmic puzzle, Hofstadter said.

Matt Taylor, ESA Rosetta project scientist, said Rosetta’s mission is to help scientists understand what the conditions were when the universe was created and how the situation evolved over time.

“Today’s successful landing is undoubtedly the cherry on the icing of a (2.5-mile-wide) cake, but we’re also looking further ahead and onto the next stage of this ground-breaking mission, as we continue to follow the comet around the sun for 13 months, watching as its activity changes and its surface evolves,” Taylor said in a statement.

Scientists hope Philae will be able to engage in an extended science phase soon after its first battery is exhausted. The lander will use a solar-rechargeable second battery.

“Ideally then the batteries will get recharged and maybe a couple of weeks or a week from now, we’ll get to operate the lander for another day,” Hofstadter said. “Then after a couple of weeks, we’ll get to operate the lander for another day. All of this is unknown.”

As the dust settles, scientists will discover if Philae’s solar panels will power the second energy source. Perhaps the panels are covered with dust or maybe Philae landed in a sun-deprived area.

If the solar panels and batteries are able to operate, the lander’s extended phase could last until March 2015. After this time, the comet will be too close to the sun, so the lander’s electronics will overheat, Hofstadter said. Regardless, Philae will be left on Comet 67P.

The head of the ESA underlined Europe’s pride in having achieved a unique first ahead of its U.S. counterpart, NASA.

“We are the first to have done that, and that will stay forever,” ESA director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain said.

Yet NASA has a contributing role to the ESA’s historic firsts. Three and a half of the instruments on Rosetta came from NASA, and the agency’s scientists have collaborated with the ESA, Hofstadter said.

In fact, one of the 11 instruments in Rosetta’s scientific payload was built at JPL in La Canada Flintridge. The Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter or MIRO measures the near-surface temperature and electrical properties of Comet 67P. Its spectrometer portion allows measurements of water, carbon monoxide, ammonia and methanol in the gaseous coma of the comet.

“We feel we can gain good insight into how the gases heat up and form the coma (the gas and dust that come out of the nucleus) and how jets might form because it turns out — and this is something we don’t understand — when the gas and dust come from the nucleus, it comes mostly in narrow beams,” Hofstadter said. “There are these concentrated jets which look almost like fountains of dust that are relatively narrow shooting out. We want to know how they form.”

NASA also provided the ESA with ALICE, an ultraviolet imaging spectrometer that analyses gases in the coma and tail. Additionally it measures the rate at which the comet produces water and carbon monoxide/dioxide.

The U.S. agency sent ESA an ion and electron sensor, which is included in a set of five sensors. NASA’s instrument, Hofstadter said, studies the magnetic properties of the comet’s nucleus and examines how the comet interacts with the sun because a lot of particles get charged through interactions with the sun.

Lastly the ESA is using some of NASA’s electronics, which is why Hofstadter said the U.S. agency contributed 3.5 tools to the European mission.

Regardless of who did what, space exploration is an international mission, and the landing on Wednesday is a success for everyone.

“Emotionally we’re humans, and we’re very visually oriented,” Hofstadter said. “And being able to have photographs as if you’re standing on the surface helps us connect with the objects we’re studying, and I think it creates creative thought when we have a human’s eye view of what we’re studying.”

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